Natalie Elwell traveled to remote villages in Burkina Faso, where she witnessed extreme poverty and lack of access to resources and government services. World Neighbors works to establish health centers and train community health workers to improve health outcomes. While access to healthcare has increased, traditional patriarchal norms marginalize women. World Neighbors promotes women's rights, literacy, economic empowerment, decision making, and leadership. Through these programs, women have gained confidence and influence, improving family well-being and food security.
Fr. Gregory Gay CM - Address to Ladies of Charity National Assembly.Famvin Europe
Fr. Gregory Gay CM, Superior General of the Congregation of the MIssion was a keynote speaker on the 12th Annual National Assembly of the Ladies of Charity USA held in Bethesda, MD, Friday, September 14. The speech reflects on the Assembly' theme “Giving in Faith and Love”
A collection of personas generated for the ALISS project workshops. Developed from an initial research phase where we interviewed people living with long term conditions
Natalie traveled through Central America focusing on gender issues in agricultural programs. She observed that while women's work is integral to the success of coffee production, their roles and contributions remain largely unrecognized. Men have yet to be liberated from machismo attitudes that restrict women's involvement and leadership. However, Natalie was impressed by some men who had experienced empowerment through development programs and expressed more progressive views toward gender equity.
1) Natalie traveled to India to support World Neighbors in integrating gender into their programs. She met with staff and conducted a needs assessment in rural villages.
2) The assessment revealed deep gender inequities like dowry disputes, abandonment of women without sons, and lack of decision making power. However, involving men in the assessment process led to some promising changes.
3) Natalie experienced the vibrant culture but also poverty and strong social conservatism resisting women's rights. She left energized by the team's efforts to improve lives through addressing gender issues.
Excluded traditional ventures and rural livelihoods among women in northern g...Alexander Decker
This document discusses traditional economic ventures undertaken by women in rural Dagbon, Ghana. It explores cotton spinning and pottery, which provide income to women while being tied to cultural and social practices. These ventures have received little attention compared to activities promoted by NGOs. However, they remain important livelihood sources for women and are interwoven with community needs and traditions. While facing threats from modernization, supporting these ventures could help address rural women's livelihoods in culturally appropriate ways. The document calls for greater understanding of the social contexts in which rural women pursue their livelihood activities.
The CEO letter summarizes Edgewood's 160 years of helping at-risk children and families and looks forward to continued success. It also highlights the new Edgewood Garden Learning Center project, which will provide a sustainable space for children and families to grow food and connect with nature. The second article provides more details on plans to build out the Sally Gotcher Children's Garden and transform it into the Garden Learning Center, with partnerships helping to design, build, and fund the project. Programs across Edgewood will be able to utilize the new outdoor space.
Girl-child beading is a cultural practice among the Samburu community in Kenya where young girls as young as 9 are engaged in relationships with older men, signified by the placement of beads around their necks. This practice amounts to sexual slavery and puts the girls at risk of health issues and ends their education. It is considered a rite of passage but denies the girls' basic human rights. Activists have spoken out against the practice but it continues due to support from community elders and a lack of action from government officials.
Fr. Gregory Gay CM - Address to Ladies of Charity National Assembly.Famvin Europe
Fr. Gregory Gay CM, Superior General of the Congregation of the MIssion was a keynote speaker on the 12th Annual National Assembly of the Ladies of Charity USA held in Bethesda, MD, Friday, September 14. The speech reflects on the Assembly' theme “Giving in Faith and Love”
A collection of personas generated for the ALISS project workshops. Developed from an initial research phase where we interviewed people living with long term conditions
Natalie traveled through Central America focusing on gender issues in agricultural programs. She observed that while women's work is integral to the success of coffee production, their roles and contributions remain largely unrecognized. Men have yet to be liberated from machismo attitudes that restrict women's involvement and leadership. However, Natalie was impressed by some men who had experienced empowerment through development programs and expressed more progressive views toward gender equity.
1) Natalie traveled to India to support World Neighbors in integrating gender into their programs. She met with staff and conducted a needs assessment in rural villages.
2) The assessment revealed deep gender inequities like dowry disputes, abandonment of women without sons, and lack of decision making power. However, involving men in the assessment process led to some promising changes.
3) Natalie experienced the vibrant culture but also poverty and strong social conservatism resisting women's rights. She left energized by the team's efforts to improve lives through addressing gender issues.
Excluded traditional ventures and rural livelihoods among women in northern g...Alexander Decker
This document discusses traditional economic ventures undertaken by women in rural Dagbon, Ghana. It explores cotton spinning and pottery, which provide income to women while being tied to cultural and social practices. These ventures have received little attention compared to activities promoted by NGOs. However, they remain important livelihood sources for women and are interwoven with community needs and traditions. While facing threats from modernization, supporting these ventures could help address rural women's livelihoods in culturally appropriate ways. The document calls for greater understanding of the social contexts in which rural women pursue their livelihood activities.
The CEO letter summarizes Edgewood's 160 years of helping at-risk children and families and looks forward to continued success. It also highlights the new Edgewood Garden Learning Center project, which will provide a sustainable space for children and families to grow food and connect with nature. The second article provides more details on plans to build out the Sally Gotcher Children's Garden and transform it into the Garden Learning Center, with partnerships helping to design, build, and fund the project. Programs across Edgewood will be able to utilize the new outdoor space.
Girl-child beading is a cultural practice among the Samburu community in Kenya where young girls as young as 9 are engaged in relationships with older men, signified by the placement of beads around their necks. This practice amounts to sexual slavery and puts the girls at risk of health issues and ends their education. It is considered a rite of passage but denies the girls' basic human rights. Activists have spoken out against the practice but it continues due to support from community elders and a lack of action from government officials.
The African Orphaned and Abandoned Children's Fund (AOAACF) aims to create safe spaces in Kenya for orphaned and abandoned children through feeding facilities and recreational activities. These safe spaces will provide supplies like food and educational materials, and organize activities to support literacy, protection, and psychosocial well-being. AOAACF also hopes to provide training for families to become foster homes or adopt children. For a donation of $35 per month, AOAACF can sponsor a child and help ensure resources are available to meet their needs.
Family, caste, religion, culture, region, and media all influence gender identity. Family transmits gender norms through assigning gender roles. Caste and religion dictate women's roles through texts like the Manu Smriti. Culture and region also shape expectations, like urban areas allowing more freedom. Media perpetuates stereotypes by portraying women as dependent and men as dominant and aggressive. All of these societal factors contribute to how children develop their own sense of gender identity.
Central Asia Institute's (CAI) first school was built in Korphe, Pakistan in 1993. The village had no prior experience with formal education. Since then, a generation of children in Korphe have become literate. Some graduates have pursued higher education and good jobs, helping their community. When heavy rains destroyed the original school in 2010, CAI quickly rebuilt it, showing their long-term commitment to the community. The new school stands as a symbol of the progress and hope that education has provided to Korphe.
During the last quarter of 2019, the Belgian NGO’s active in the Philippines co-produced a publication of gender stories in their development programs. It aims to bring together and promote best practices and stories on achieving gender equalities in a still male-dominated Philippine society. From the football wonder girl Camille in Manila to Jovencia, a formidable guardian of a marine protected area in Lanao del Norte; from Nanay Nita’s economic empowerment in Camarines Norte to Ka Femia, the first woman lumad in Congress; from the women’s leaders in Sumilao to the struggle for recognition of women farmers in Pampanga, feel inspired to join us in our journey through these and eleven more testimonies of economically, politically, and socially empowered girls, women, and men who were able to bring about substantial gender changes in their family, community, or organization, and as such add step stones towards a fully gender-equal Philippine society. Enjoy reading and feel free to download and further disseminate.
The document summarizes the work of the Ancestral Wisdom Bridge Foundation, which is dedicated to sharing the indigenous spiritual practices and teachings of the Dagara people of West Africa. The Foundation maintains a training center called the East Coast Village in New York, where they offer rituals, healing practices, and apprenticeship programs related to the Dagara tradition as taught by elder Malidoma Somé. The Village aims to empower people and communities through these African spirit technologies.
Volume 2: issue 3
Contents
• PAN at a glance:2013
• Front Page father Media Campaign Launched
• PAN Materials: Translated and Impacting Communities in East Africa
• A COLD WAR BREWING: The ‘Lost’ New Generation should borrow from indigenous knowledge on Parenting
• PAN Events
Archive newsletters on PAN Website: Download: Download previous PAN newsletters, click on link: http://www.parentinginafrica.org/en/index.php?option=com_jdownloads&Itemid=49&view=viewcategory&catid=6
Maranatha Care Foundation is a community organization in Malawi that aims to assist the less privileged through projects in education, health, agriculture, environment, infrastructure and safe drinking water. It has registered offices in Balaka and works in villages in the Balaka area. Its key projects include supporting girls' education, HIV/AIDS awareness and testing, building bridges to improve access to services, irrigation initiatives for food security, and water harvesting to improve access to drinking water and prevent soil erosion. It implements projects in partnership with local committees to identify and monitor beneficiaries.
Afrikan-centered Rites of Passage: Feat. Wade Nobles, Paul Hill, Jr. and Lath...RBG Communiversity
The document discusses Afrocentric rites of passage programs for African American youth. It provides historical context on the importance of rites of passage ceremonies in African cultures to mark the transition to adulthood. Such ceremonies were disrupted by the slave trade and need to be reinstituted. Current youth development programs focus on skills and mainstreaming, but lack caring adult mentors. Rites of passage programs could help harvest a new generation of whole African American youth by providing transitional figures to welcome them into adulthood.
Earning Their Way to Healthier Lives: Women First in MozambiqueAIDSTAROne
A complex matrix of factors, such as low literacy, early sexual initiation, and limited economic opportunities, increases the vulnerability of women to HIV infection in Mozambique. The Women First program addresses the role that poverty and lack of access to health information play in the spread of HIV through legal rights and income-generating activities.
This case study covers one of the 31 programs from the Africa Gender Compendium, an AIDSTAR-One gender and HIV integration resource. A series of five Africa Gender Compendium case studies is accompanied by a findings report, which describes lessons learned, gaps, and common experiences across the programs.
Download this and other gender & HIV resources: http://j.mp/zyjmG7
Silent Sacrifices: Girl-child beading in the Samburu Community of KenyaDr Lendy Spires
This document summarizes a research report by Samburu Women Trust on the practice of "beading" among Samburu girls in Kenya. The report provides background on SWT and their motivation for studying beading. It then describes the research methodology, which included interviews and surveys. Key findings are that beading has deep cultural roots but can negatively impact girls through early pregnancy and trauma. The report aims to promote community dialogue to better protect girls' rights while respecting cultural traditions.
The document is a newsletter from Lyn SIYA dedicated to women. It pays tribute to Dr. Maya Angelou for overcoming prejudice to become a renowned author and activist. It also discusses the kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram and calls for their safe return. The newsletter includes sections on health resources and poetry related to empowering women and the situation in Nigeria.
The document describes the plight of the residents of Isla Noah community in Quezon City, Philippines. Most residents are poor migrants from other regions who work low-wage jobs. They live in a congested area prone to flooding, with poor sanitation and high pollution. Despite their difficulties, they maintain strong faith and community support. The document calls for integrated solutions to address their socio-economic needs while protecting the environment, recognizing all life is interconnected.
International Women's Day celebrates gender equality and women's empowerment. The first events in 1911 focused on gaining basic rights for women like voting, equal pay, and speaking in public. While progress has been made, many women worldwide still lack legal rights and face issues like violence, unequal pay, and barriers to participating equally in the workforce. Addressing challenges facing women through awareness and understanding is important to achieving full gender equality.
West News Magazine Global Good Article2Dawn Malcolm
Dawn Malcolm founded the nonprofit Lighting the Path in 2011 to empower women in remote villages in Burkina Faso, Africa through social programs and teaching skills like sewing, weaving, and making soap. She travels to Africa twice a year for about a month at a time to teach skills to help the women earn income. The programs have helped the women earn more money to support their families and gain a sense of self-worth in their communities. Lighting the Path also partners with other organizations to provide resources for education, health, and basic needs for the villagers.
Women constitute half the population but receive only one tenth of income and undertake two thirds of total work with longer working hours than men. They lack education, health care, and empowerment. Empowerment has become a widely used goal but is poorly defined. Key factors constraining women's empowerment include their heavy workload, isolation, illiteracy, traditional views limiting participation, lack of funds, conflicts, and discriminatory policies. Empowering women requires addressing these issues through gender analysis, reducing drudgery, raising rights awareness, ensuring equal leadership opportunities, organizing women's groups, expanding access to financial services, increasing literacy, improving health services, and halting child marriage.
The document summarizes the author's work establishing a school for girls in the Chorah Valley of Afghanistan while serving there from 2011 to 2012. Facing cultural resistance, the author worked with local leaders to open the school and increase enrollment, hiring the first teacher and providing supplies. The school helped provide education and opportunities for growth to girls in the region and is still operating after coalition forces withdrew, representing the author's proudest professional achievement for improving conditions for women and children.
Shape Lives Foundation is a non-profit organization that has been working since 2004 to improve living standards in Ghana. In 2007, it supported numerous poverty reduction, empowerment and developmental projects. It provided bicycles to over 1,000 people, including students and farmers, to help with transportation issues. It also supported an orphanage, provided assistance to a school for the deaf, and implemented an economic empowerment project training over 800 basket weavers. Financially, the organization had over 650,000 GHC in total income and spent 630,000 on administrative, project and educational expenses.
The document summarizes presentations from several organizations working on girls' education initiatives around the world. The Maasai Girls Education Fund works to improve literacy, health and economic well-being of Maasai women and girls in Kenya through education. Starfish One By One concentrates on unlocking the potential of 500 girl pioneers in rural Guatemala through innovation and mentorship. The Nepal Youth Foundation provides healthcare, education and a safe environment for Nepal's most impoverished children. Dining for Women supports grassroots programs empowering, educating and protecting women and girls through collective giving at dinner events.
Recognising local innovation in livestock-keeping – a path to empowering womencopppldsecretariat
Prolinnova is an international network that involves a range of different stakeholders. The network promotes farmer-led approaches to development such as participatory innovation development. Farmers and natural resource users often find novel ways of using natural resources to address challenges and improve their livelihoods. In many rural communities, women do not have the same access as men to resources such as land. They also often have much less decision-making power or capacity. Giving recognition to, and supporting, the innovative capacity of women farmers is seen as an effective mechanism to strengthen their role in rural research and development.
[ Originally posted on http://www.cop-ppld.net/cop_knowledge_base ]
The African Orphaned and Abandoned Children's Fund (AOAACF) aims to create safe spaces in Kenya for orphaned and abandoned children through feeding facilities and recreational activities. These safe spaces will provide supplies like food and educational materials, and organize activities to support literacy, protection, and psychosocial well-being. AOAACF also hopes to provide training for families to become foster homes or adopt children. For a donation of $35 per month, AOAACF can sponsor a child and help ensure resources are available to meet their needs.
Family, caste, religion, culture, region, and media all influence gender identity. Family transmits gender norms through assigning gender roles. Caste and religion dictate women's roles through texts like the Manu Smriti. Culture and region also shape expectations, like urban areas allowing more freedom. Media perpetuates stereotypes by portraying women as dependent and men as dominant and aggressive. All of these societal factors contribute to how children develop their own sense of gender identity.
Central Asia Institute's (CAI) first school was built in Korphe, Pakistan in 1993. The village had no prior experience with formal education. Since then, a generation of children in Korphe have become literate. Some graduates have pursued higher education and good jobs, helping their community. When heavy rains destroyed the original school in 2010, CAI quickly rebuilt it, showing their long-term commitment to the community. The new school stands as a symbol of the progress and hope that education has provided to Korphe.
During the last quarter of 2019, the Belgian NGO’s active in the Philippines co-produced a publication of gender stories in their development programs. It aims to bring together and promote best practices and stories on achieving gender equalities in a still male-dominated Philippine society. From the football wonder girl Camille in Manila to Jovencia, a formidable guardian of a marine protected area in Lanao del Norte; from Nanay Nita’s economic empowerment in Camarines Norte to Ka Femia, the first woman lumad in Congress; from the women’s leaders in Sumilao to the struggle for recognition of women farmers in Pampanga, feel inspired to join us in our journey through these and eleven more testimonies of economically, politically, and socially empowered girls, women, and men who were able to bring about substantial gender changes in their family, community, or organization, and as such add step stones towards a fully gender-equal Philippine society. Enjoy reading and feel free to download and further disseminate.
The document summarizes the work of the Ancestral Wisdom Bridge Foundation, which is dedicated to sharing the indigenous spiritual practices and teachings of the Dagara people of West Africa. The Foundation maintains a training center called the East Coast Village in New York, where they offer rituals, healing practices, and apprenticeship programs related to the Dagara tradition as taught by elder Malidoma Somé. The Village aims to empower people and communities through these African spirit technologies.
Volume 2: issue 3
Contents
• PAN at a glance:2013
• Front Page father Media Campaign Launched
• PAN Materials: Translated and Impacting Communities in East Africa
• A COLD WAR BREWING: The ‘Lost’ New Generation should borrow from indigenous knowledge on Parenting
• PAN Events
Archive newsletters on PAN Website: Download: Download previous PAN newsletters, click on link: http://www.parentinginafrica.org/en/index.php?option=com_jdownloads&Itemid=49&view=viewcategory&catid=6
Maranatha Care Foundation is a community organization in Malawi that aims to assist the less privileged through projects in education, health, agriculture, environment, infrastructure and safe drinking water. It has registered offices in Balaka and works in villages in the Balaka area. Its key projects include supporting girls' education, HIV/AIDS awareness and testing, building bridges to improve access to services, irrigation initiatives for food security, and water harvesting to improve access to drinking water and prevent soil erosion. It implements projects in partnership with local committees to identify and monitor beneficiaries.
Afrikan-centered Rites of Passage: Feat. Wade Nobles, Paul Hill, Jr. and Lath...RBG Communiversity
The document discusses Afrocentric rites of passage programs for African American youth. It provides historical context on the importance of rites of passage ceremonies in African cultures to mark the transition to adulthood. Such ceremonies were disrupted by the slave trade and need to be reinstituted. Current youth development programs focus on skills and mainstreaming, but lack caring adult mentors. Rites of passage programs could help harvest a new generation of whole African American youth by providing transitional figures to welcome them into adulthood.
Earning Their Way to Healthier Lives: Women First in MozambiqueAIDSTAROne
A complex matrix of factors, such as low literacy, early sexual initiation, and limited economic opportunities, increases the vulnerability of women to HIV infection in Mozambique. The Women First program addresses the role that poverty and lack of access to health information play in the spread of HIV through legal rights and income-generating activities.
This case study covers one of the 31 programs from the Africa Gender Compendium, an AIDSTAR-One gender and HIV integration resource. A series of five Africa Gender Compendium case studies is accompanied by a findings report, which describes lessons learned, gaps, and common experiences across the programs.
Download this and other gender & HIV resources: http://j.mp/zyjmG7
Silent Sacrifices: Girl-child beading in the Samburu Community of KenyaDr Lendy Spires
This document summarizes a research report by Samburu Women Trust on the practice of "beading" among Samburu girls in Kenya. The report provides background on SWT and their motivation for studying beading. It then describes the research methodology, which included interviews and surveys. Key findings are that beading has deep cultural roots but can negatively impact girls through early pregnancy and trauma. The report aims to promote community dialogue to better protect girls' rights while respecting cultural traditions.
The document is a newsletter from Lyn SIYA dedicated to women. It pays tribute to Dr. Maya Angelou for overcoming prejudice to become a renowned author and activist. It also discusses the kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram and calls for their safe return. The newsletter includes sections on health resources and poetry related to empowering women and the situation in Nigeria.
The document describes the plight of the residents of Isla Noah community in Quezon City, Philippines. Most residents are poor migrants from other regions who work low-wage jobs. They live in a congested area prone to flooding, with poor sanitation and high pollution. Despite their difficulties, they maintain strong faith and community support. The document calls for integrated solutions to address their socio-economic needs while protecting the environment, recognizing all life is interconnected.
International Women's Day celebrates gender equality and women's empowerment. The first events in 1911 focused on gaining basic rights for women like voting, equal pay, and speaking in public. While progress has been made, many women worldwide still lack legal rights and face issues like violence, unequal pay, and barriers to participating equally in the workforce. Addressing challenges facing women through awareness and understanding is important to achieving full gender equality.
West News Magazine Global Good Article2Dawn Malcolm
Dawn Malcolm founded the nonprofit Lighting the Path in 2011 to empower women in remote villages in Burkina Faso, Africa through social programs and teaching skills like sewing, weaving, and making soap. She travels to Africa twice a year for about a month at a time to teach skills to help the women earn income. The programs have helped the women earn more money to support their families and gain a sense of self-worth in their communities. Lighting the Path also partners with other organizations to provide resources for education, health, and basic needs for the villagers.
Women constitute half the population but receive only one tenth of income and undertake two thirds of total work with longer working hours than men. They lack education, health care, and empowerment. Empowerment has become a widely used goal but is poorly defined. Key factors constraining women's empowerment include their heavy workload, isolation, illiteracy, traditional views limiting participation, lack of funds, conflicts, and discriminatory policies. Empowering women requires addressing these issues through gender analysis, reducing drudgery, raising rights awareness, ensuring equal leadership opportunities, organizing women's groups, expanding access to financial services, increasing literacy, improving health services, and halting child marriage.
The document summarizes the author's work establishing a school for girls in the Chorah Valley of Afghanistan while serving there from 2011 to 2012. Facing cultural resistance, the author worked with local leaders to open the school and increase enrollment, hiring the first teacher and providing supplies. The school helped provide education and opportunities for growth to girls in the region and is still operating after coalition forces withdrew, representing the author's proudest professional achievement for improving conditions for women and children.
Shape Lives Foundation is a non-profit organization that has been working since 2004 to improve living standards in Ghana. In 2007, it supported numerous poverty reduction, empowerment and developmental projects. It provided bicycles to over 1,000 people, including students and farmers, to help with transportation issues. It also supported an orphanage, provided assistance to a school for the deaf, and implemented an economic empowerment project training over 800 basket weavers. Financially, the organization had over 650,000 GHC in total income and spent 630,000 on administrative, project and educational expenses.
The document summarizes presentations from several organizations working on girls' education initiatives around the world. The Maasai Girls Education Fund works to improve literacy, health and economic well-being of Maasai women and girls in Kenya through education. Starfish One By One concentrates on unlocking the potential of 500 girl pioneers in rural Guatemala through innovation and mentorship. The Nepal Youth Foundation provides healthcare, education and a safe environment for Nepal's most impoverished children. Dining for Women supports grassroots programs empowering, educating and protecting women and girls through collective giving at dinner events.
Recognising local innovation in livestock-keeping – a path to empowering womencopppldsecretariat
Prolinnova is an international network that involves a range of different stakeholders. The network promotes farmer-led approaches to development such as participatory innovation development. Farmers and natural resource users often find novel ways of using natural resources to address challenges and improve their livelihoods. In many rural communities, women do not have the same access as men to resources such as land. They also often have much less decision-making power or capacity. Giving recognition to, and supporting, the innovative capacity of women farmers is seen as an effective mechanism to strengthen their role in rural research and development.
[ Originally posted on http://www.cop-ppld.net/cop_knowledge_base ]
Recognising local innovation in livestock-keeping – a path to empowering women
Burkina Faso Digital Trip Report
1. Beyond the End of the Road
with Natalie Elwell
Associate Vice President
Action Learning Communication & Gender
World Neighbors, Inc.
Burkina Faso:
Not all who wander are lost…
2. Three years ago I traveled to Burkina Faso
Natalie’s Travels in Burkina Faso
for the first time. This was an emotionally
difficult trip as, despite visiting during the
harvest season, the poverty was the most
extreme I’d seen.
World Neighbors had recently begun
working in several new communities
situated far from even a dirt road. These
communities suffered from a severe lack of
natural resources: water, fuel wood, soil, As distant drums beat
compounded by natural hardships: draught, in anticipation of our
arrival we feared we
insect infestations, and soil erosion to name would be stuck until
a few. If that weren’t bad enough, the dry season. The
government services such as health care, villagers eventually
infrastructure and education rarely made came and pushed us
their way to these remote villages. to the footpath
leading to their
village.
3. Burkina Faso has one of the highest infant and
child, as well as maternal mortality rates in
Africa. Imagine traversing a day or more along
Natalie’s Travels in Burkina Faso
those gullied paths to access a health clinic
when complications arise while delivering your
baby in your home, or carrying a child sick
with malaria or diarrhea on a bike, or donkey
cart if you’re lucky. A packed mud slab in a
thatch-covered hut served
World Neighbors works with communities to as a birthing and pre and
establish village health centers and to train post-natal care center in
volunteer community health workers to many villages – often
recognize danger signs during pregnancy, and built as an outpost for
to provide information on improved nutrition, government health
personnel. Lydia Tapsoba
hygiene and disease prevention. Zanze, pictured, is World
Nutrition surveys and health center records Neighbors West Africa
show that this strategy is working to reduce Area Health Coordinator.
disease, increase child nutrition and the
number of births attended by professionals in a
clinic.
4. While geographic remoteness marginalizes
these villages, patriarchal traditions marginalize
Natalie’s Travels in Burkina Faso
women within their villages. Even when
healthcare is available women were often not
permitted to use family funds to access the
services.
An assessment of women’s status in new These women were
illiterate and only able to
program areas revealed that the value of communicate in their
women was on par with that of a mule. village dialect,, one of
Although I noticed that while the mules had many factors isolating
padding on their burdened backs, women’s them from inter-village
were bare. and market activities.
Women’s heavy workload was but one barrier
to their participation in development activities.
When I met these women three years ago they
were so shy and insecure they wouldn’t even
tell us their names. They knew their lives were
difficult, they just thought that was a woman’s
lot.
5. World Neighbors programs had made some
advances in the status of women involved in our
programs, but in 2005 we initiated an effort to
Natalie’s Travels in Burkina Faso
strengthen our work in this regard. With the
support of New Field Foundation, World
Neighbors identified the key factors for women’s
advancement and tested the application of those
key factors in several programs, including West
Africa, with the result of more rapid, widespread
advancements for women. And let’s not forget
that advancements for women translate into
benefits for their families and communities! These were the only
Those key factors: literate women in a
group of 200
Awareness of rights
Literacy
Economic empowerment
Decision making
Leadership
Not to mention a little attitude adjustment for
men☺!
6. This seems like a tall order when you consider
the starting point – read about “A Day in the
Natalie’s Travels in Burkina Faso
Life of a West African Woman” in this WOW!
issue brief :
http://www.workofwomen.org/2008-08-
Issue-Brief.php.
But our team in West Africa went to work Our local partner’s roaming
theatre troupe treated me
training community members to campaign to a special performance.
door to door about issues such as domestic The troupe goes from
violence, dowry, forced marriage and village to village performing
discrimination in the schools; fostering skits about inequitable
communication skills between couples - which situations in the family and
community and prompting
goes a long way in helping men support discussions about change.
women’s advancements; providing literacy
training for women; organizing women into
associations for income generating activities;
and identifying and strengthening the skills of
women leaders.
7. In 2006 and 2007 a couple of women involved
in our programs who exemplified leadership
Natalie’s Travels in Burkina Faso
qualities received support from the New Field
Foundation to participate in the World Social
Forums held in Mali and Kenya. Inspired and
motivated, these women returned to their
villages and began organizing.
Prompted by reports of their dramatic
achievements, I returned to Burkina Faso this
past January, during a dry season aggravated by
drought. Although the forecast from district
After Tindanu spoke
chiefs about food scarcity was grim, I met of the changes in her
woman after woman confident that her children community, her
would not go hungry. husband confirmed
they were for the
In every village we visited, women stood in better with a rare
front of the crowd and “visiting dignitaries,” and public display of
spoke of their accomplishments while their affection. Read about
husbands listened with respect and pride. their story in the Fall
issue of Neighbors
8. Pauline was involved in a self-help women’s
group in her village that loaned money to
members to initiate individual income-
Natalie’s Travels in Burkina Faso
generating activities. However, when Pauline
returned from the World Social Forum she was
full of fresh ideas and the knowledge that other
women were doing more than loaning money,
they were affecting social change. It wasn’t long
before her group began to leverage their
Pauline’s leadership skills
collective voice to prioritize women’s
recently got her elected
community development needs resulting in to the vice president
literacy training, HIV screenings, rainwater position of the inter-
collection tanks, and awareness raising on rights. village association which
guides the development
Some women were initially forbidden by their activities of 22 villages.
husbands to participate. However, once they
witnessed the benefits gained by participating
women’s families, those husbands not only
opened their doors, they started helping with
their chores so they’d have time to participate.
9. Knowing the importance of sharing experiences,
the women in Pauline’s groups dedicated
Natalie’s Travels in Burkina Faso
themselves to traveling to other villages to train
women to start self-help groups.
The women in these groups report significant
improvements in their well-being: Individual
The women in Gorgo
and collective income generating activities give village formed their group
women decision making power over a portion after hearing from Pauline.
of the household money so they can purchase With some of the profits
more nutritious food, send their kids to school, from their collective peanut
marketing activities they
access health services, and maybe even buy new
purchased a uniform which
clothes. they call their “cloth of
Literacy classes, couple communication joy”.
exercises, and sensitization sessions about rights
and gender relations have helped reduce
domestic violence, forced marriage, polygamy,
female genital mutilation and risky sexual
behavior.
10. In Burkina Faso it is customary for villagers to
Natalie’s Travels in Burkina Faso
collectively give a gift to their departing visitor.
On my first visit I felt like I was taking food
from the mouths of children when I was given a
couple of chickens. This year I am confident
that no one will go hungry because of my visit.
On behalf of World
Although I’m not entirely sure that the goat Neighbors I accept gifts of
and guinea fowl weren’t really a symbol of my goat, guinea fowl, peanuts
betrothal to become the seventh wife of the and cloth from the Prefect
district chief - as my colleagues teased. and Inspector of Basic
Education in Yargatenga
who represent the local
government and
Department Chief.
11. Thanks for your interest.
Please feel free to contact me
with questions or comments.
Natalie Elwell
Associate Vice President
Action Learning Communication
& Gender
World Neighbors, Inc.
4127 NW 122nd Street
OKC, OK 73120 USA
(405)752-9700
nelwell@wn.org
www.wn.org
Check back soon for
updates on our efforts to
address gender inequity in
Central and South America